Richard Holbrooke and the Clinton Curse

You know it’s
bad when the cable news networks were no longer leading off with Richard
Holbrooke, less than 24 hours after his unexpected death on Dec. 13.

Instead, the passing of the 69-year-old
career diplomat and special envoy to Afghanistan-Pakistan was bumped
on Dec. 14 for yet another tedious political ping-pong story involving
the senate tax bill, a report no one likely remembered, say, past Dec.
15. Within a day, Holbrooke the man became less of a headline than speculation
over the “hole” he is supposedly leaving in President Obama’s
foundering war strategy. Hardly the desired end for a man who 15 years
ago– if not two years ago – would have garnered a much more grandiose
postmortem, one fit for winning war generals and the like. He had after
all, inspired such monikers over the years as “giant,” “bulldozer”
and “raging bull,” and was lavishly credited with “ending” the
1992-1995 war in Bosnia.

Instead, Holbrooke seems to be the
latest, most explicit victim of the Clinton Curse.

Let me explain.

Exactly two years ago, I wrote, “Clinton
Cabinet: The
politics of change look surprisingly familiar,”
for The American Conservative,
the premise of which was that the new Obama Administration, fresh from
a nasty primary battle with Hillary Clinton, and an even nastier election
against Republican John McCain, seemed to be relying a bit too heavily
on the older Democratic regime – out of fear, lack of confidence, perhaps
a Faustian bargain forged to end the primary – but nonetheless it
had raised eyebrows at the time.

“Clintonites are everywhere!” declared Politico on Nov. 14, 2008, a scant few days after the election
and amid rumors that Obama and Clinton had met privately for undisclosed
reasons that we now know must’ve had something to do with her becoming
the next Secretary of State.

“Obama’s victory in the general election
produced what his primary campaign couldn’t: A swift merger of the Clinton
Wing of the Democratic Party with the Illinois Senator’s self-styled
insurgency. …
The absorption of the Clinton government in-waiting represents Obama’s
choice not to repeat what he and his advisers see as an early mistake
made by the last two presidents: Attempting to wield power in Washington
through an insular campaign apparatus new to town.”

Richard Holbrooke

One needs only to look at Hillary Clinton’s
eerily robotic posture as she eulogized
her decades-old friend
in an official State Department briefing last week, to sense that the
“merger” has been less fruitful than anticipated. The most she could
offer about Holbrooke’s recent contributions is he “accomplished
so much.” But what could she really say outside of the sanctioned
(sanitized) bio that typically
begins with his time as a Kennedy-driven foreign service officer in
Vietnam, and ends with the Dayton Accords? Like Holbrooke, her own star
has dimmed in the last two years and newsworthy achievements very far
and few to come by. Clinton’s status as the heroic female politician
who strode election campaigns, scandal and the minefield of congress
with the determination of Patton, has been reduced in spirit to that
of a methodical “senior stateswoman,” and certainly not in any exciting
way. As of today, she will hardly be known to have advanced her office
beyond that of her predecessors, particularly from behind the tall and
glowering shadow of the military overseas and in Washington, or to have
claimed any glory for herself or the President. She oftentimes looks
wan, and kind of like a Stepford diplomat.

But how the speculation soared in December
2008! “So ascendant are the Clintonistas,” I wrote then, “that it’s hard to believe Hillary lost.”
At that time, not less than half of the 50 people already appointed
to Obama’s transition teams or staff jobs had Clinton connections,
including all but one of his important 12-member advisory board.

Then, the Clinton era still induced
heavy nostalgia among a wide swath of Democrats, who had raised Hillary
and President Bill Clinton up as the super couple that had resurrected
Camelot, reaffirmed their liberal ideals, and saw the country, right
up to the millennium, through a period of economic growth and peace.
In this forgiving light, everything smelled sweet (though lots of us
knew it stunk), but it didn’t matter, by the time Obama, a relative
hayseed in comparison, was inaugurated, most Democrats welcomed the
Clintons back into the bosom of Washington, and saw them not as an intrusion,
but as a necessary ally and bulwark for the tough times ahead.

How could anyone forget the ink spilled
in spinning the
appointment of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, just a few days after the 2008 election?
Emanuel was a Clintonista and political animal of the first order, who
was given the nickname “Rahmbo” when he served in the House, and
was known as a “fierce and consummate navigator of the capital’s
political terrain,” and was supposed to serve as Obama’s chief whip,
enforcer and negotiator for the restive congress. At the time of his
appointment, Emanuel said his goal was to “deliver the change America
needs,” and to “help summon Americans of both parties to unite in
common purpose.” Most people who knew Rahmbo knew better.

Rahm Emanuel

Turns out if Rahm were Rambo there
would have never have been a sequel. From the beginning, the only “unity”
on the Hill turned out to be the Republicans in attacking every move
Obama made. The burgeoning Tea Party forced Obama on the defense the
entire summer of 2009, scattering Democratic unity over health care
reform legislation, which became an albatross rather a feather for the
new administration’s cap. Any “triangulation” on the part of the
president that might have worked when Emanuel was serving as a top aide
in the Clinton administration, only made Obama look pensive and weak
and soon he disappointed everyone, left and right alike. Meanwhile,
Emanuel was
tainted by the Blagojevich scandal
and seemed pretty ineffective on all other serious fronts, particularly
in helping Obama rise above the fray of partisanship, and attacks of
socialism in the economic ring. He resigned almost two years to the
day of his appointment, ostensibly to run for Mayor of Chicago, but
there were rumors of his leaving for months, which hardly inspired confidence,
seeing the reports began during the
worst environmental disaster in U.S
history and presidential
approval ratings of 38 percent.

No doubt, Emanuel looks smaller than
when he went in. Trim away the fat of folklore and hype and you have
just another Machiavellian pol. Meanwhile, the first two critical years
of Obama’s presidency were marred by infighting and confusion, just
what he had hired Emanuel to help him avoid.

Then there’s
Lawrence Summers, former Clinton Treasury Secretary and president of
Harvard University, who at
the time of his own appointment as director of Obama’s National Economic
Council was touted as a
“brilliant” thinker who would “ensure the NEC is returned to its
place as the clearing house for policy ideas and initiatives.” He
later went on to be the architect of the $850 billion stimulus package
and the bailout of the auto industry, flashpoints for the landslide
victory of Republicans in the recent midterm elections. Democrat or
Republican, voters have been ambivalent about Obama’s economic policies
because the big “bail outs” have yet to translate into any practical
payoff for the average American.

Meanwhile, Summers
is bailing in a week, headed
back to Harvard with his brilliant mind and little glory under his big
belt. Sure, there are plenty of people, like New Yorker columnist John
Cassidy, who say Summers
“got things largely right,” and “for this, at least, we owe him
some gratitude.” But tell that to the poor sap down the street pulling
two jobs to put food on the table while pay on Wall Street is set to
increase for a second consecutive year, hitting
a record high of $144 billion.
Sure he “did his job” – but not for anyone without an office with
a 212 prefix or a home address in Greenwich or Westchester County or
the like.

And who will really remember – or care – that Hillary introduced
the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and
Development Review? And the fact that Holbrooke kept much of his angst about the way the military was
handling the war private won’t earn him more than a footnote when we scour over
the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan 50 years from now.

Hillary Clinton

Fact is, for all of their heft and
promise, they were both overwhelmed by the military’s micromanagement
of the wars and of foreign policy overseas, and whatever talents they
might have brought to the table suffered for it. This is ironic, because
Clinton had so assiduously courted and cultivated military types during
her stint as senator and as a presidential candidate. Now she has to
fight for every dollar just to do her job in Afghanistan, and
listen to the high hats in the E Ring say they
are tired of doing all the work for her!

Meanwhile Holbrooke was publicly ridiculed
by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, as documented in Michael
Hastings’s powerhouse profile in Rolling Stone.
But Holbrooke was no dove – as assistant secretary of state under
Clinton, he had pressed the White House hard to militarily intervene
in the Bosnian conflict by bombing Serbia in 1994, and had been a staunch
advocate for muscular, interventionist American foreign policy as a
show of moral authority.

In his own memoir, To End a War,
he wrote, “There will be other Bosnias in our lives … areas where
early outside involvement can be decisive and American leadership will
be required. … The world will look to Washington for more than rhetoric
the next time we face a challenge to peace.”

Holbrooke was backed up by then-Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright, who told an aghast Colin Powell at the
time, “what’s the point of having this superb military that you’re
always talking about if we can’t use it?” Under President Bush and
after 9/11, the military transcended its civilian-handler relationship
and couldn’t seemingly care less whether Holbrooke was a hawk or a dove
or had supported the invasion of Iraq. They didn’t seem to “get”
Holbrooke’s magic, and when he supposedly turned on the Pentagon’s
plans to escalate the war through COIN, (again privately) it led to the
parting and to the ridicule and mistrust.

What a turnaround. Two years ago when
he was tapped by Obama to be the special envoy to the region, the appointment
was accompanied by the usual panegyrics to his diplomatic prowess, expanding
upon the theme that the “adults” were back in charge. When he made
his first trip to the region, writer David Ignatius described it as “an unusual exercise in strategic
listening,” and a “bravura diplomatic show” that “seemed
to have the desired effect.”

To say Holbrooke did not deliver is
an understatement. To be fair, the odds were not in his favor. And the
political conditions were immune to his formula. When he tried to give
Afghan President Hamid Karzai the
“raging bull” treatment
over the fraudulent president elections in August 2009, he ended up
narrowing his own role in the process. Two months later, the press was
asking, “Where’s
Dick?”

“We’re in the midst of the
biggest political crisis in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban
government in 2001…

“Where then is Richard C. Holbrooke,
the president’s Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan?
…

“A quick check of the State
Department Web site shows that Holbrooke’s last public appearance
before the media was nearly a month ago, during the UN General Assembly
in New York.

“Coincidence? We thought not.”

He didn’t give up, however, even
if he was toiling more in the shadows than he was used to during the
Bosnian conflict. There is
a dispute over his last words,
though if one were writing this as a tragedy it would seem that the
war was one adversary he could not charm or intimidate, nor throw his
weight at. In fact, in the end, the trying probably killed him (I’m
not being presumptuous, exactly. It was only eight months ago that his doctor told him he might
have clogged heart arteries,
yet he told his staff it was “routine” and pledged to get back overseas
ASAP).

On one hand it’s clear that these
underperforming Clintonites suffer from a bad case of unrealistic expectations,
generated by decades of myth-making by the Fourth Estate, assorted hagiographers
and political strivers. And it still goes on habitually if not completely
wholeheartedly, in the wake of Holbrooke’s death: over the weekend
Vice President Biden called Holbrooke a “warrior for peace,” and
Senator John Kerry spoke of all the “lives saved” by Holbrooke.
Surely the mainstream media never talks
about all the bloodshed caused by Holbrooke’s
career-long machinations,
his support for Iraq, the biggest foreign policy blunder in recent history.

No doubt there will be plenty of talk
about the failures of peace despite
his heroic attempts to achieve it, but let’s hope, especially now
that some of the Clinton glamour is wearing off, there will be more
analysis over his failure to achieve it.

On the other hand, while we know how
the military may have squeezed them to the side, how much has the Obama
Administration marginalized or flat-out sabotaged the Clintonistas’
game since bringing them all on board? The
story of old Clinton pal and administration counsel
Greg Craig comes to mind.
Some, like political science professor Terry Madonna at Franklin &
Marshall College in Pennsylvania, suggest Obama is the problem.

“The President sets the overall direction
in foreign policy as you know, and Obama has not projected an America
of strength and determination but she still gets to do the implementation,”
he told Antiwar.com “It is unusual for so many key folks to leave
before the midterm as we have had with this administration—again that
does not project an administration that has developed any consistency
in its decision making process.”

It’s often said that Obama wanted
to “keep his enemies close” but has never trusted their close
counsel. In his book Obama’s Wars, author Bob Woodward said Holbrooke knew
the President “didn’t care for him”; that the two men didn’t connect, suggesting
the only reason Holbrooke was on board was at Hillary’s behest, or
that Holbrooke’s larger-than-life reputation had bedazzled Obama,
who was desperate over the “Af-Pak” dilemma. Maybe a little of both.
But the spell apparently wore off quite quickly.

Then there is the case of the Clintons
being the curse – the Clintonistas being bred on hardscrabble politics
at home and an inflated sense of moral exceptionalism abroad, dooming
Obama from the start. If anything, the recent WikiLeaks cables prove
little has changed on this front in 20 years.

Holbrooke’s death only puts all of
these ironies into starker relief. He fell victim to the very curse he had helped perpetuate.

Yes, Strobe Talbott once called Holbrooke
the “diplomatic equivalent of the hydrogen bomb.” It could
very well be that he self-destructed, and only history will tell us
how much the Clintonistas really had a hand in destroying. But with
him, perhaps the myth of neo-Camelot will soon be buried, too.

Author: Kelley B. Vlahos

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.

so kelley writes 2500 words about holbrooke and clintonistas… to what purpose?

beats me

wadosy

i tell you what…

it's beginning to piss me off, that i have to do the heavy lifting, and all you guys do is pump out ream upon ream of balderdash.

i'm going for beer, and then we'll all be in trouble.

MvGuy

The "hole" had a hand in the killing of millions of mostly innocent victims… He cut his teeth with Henry [Christmas Bombing] Kissinger… " According to Defense Dept official 26,369 South Vietnamese civilians killed under Phoenix while op under direct U.S. control (Jan 68 thru Aug 72 ). By same source, another 33,358 detained without trial. Colby in 73 admitted 20,587 deaths thru end 71 , 28,978 captured, and 17,717 "rallied" to Saigon gvt. Thus approx 30% targeted individuals killed. All Phoenix stats fail to reflect U.S. Activity after "official" U.S. Control of op abandoned. Counterspy spring/summer 75 8.

His attention then was put into the genocide in E. Timor….. Just HOW much blood do the "hole's" hands carry……..Don't forget to add Bosnia, Iraq AND Afghanistan…. He was a neocon mass murderer………

Bianca

It is the Kosovo curse that is haunting Clintonites. How little do they understand what is unleashed in Kosovo. When Gods want to destroy someone, they first make them mad. Make them convinced of their omnipotence, and insensitive to blood of innocents. After so much Hubris, the Nemesis is stalking the land.

Johnny in Wi.

Would it be fair to say that the Ivy League, Zionist, elites have been a complete and abject failure in both domestic and foreign affairs? I would say yes, and it will be us poor slobs who have to pay for it all.

wadosy

the looters are looting trillions of dollars.

where's the failure?

wadosy

i mean, it's almost as if you believe any of these people believes in anything but money.

wadosy

that might be unfair to you, Johnny in Wi.

i agree with you… the PNAC project is so loopy that it cant be anything more than cover for the biggest looting operation ever.

wadosy

it could be that, the way things are heading, we cant rely on people like kelley and justin to tell us what's happening.

it could be that things are working towards us telling each other the truth, but we need
a place to post what seems to be the truth.

meanwhile, places like antiwar.com are not so awfully truthful, but at least they give us a place to post our versions of the truth.

Some of us (well, me anyway) have been waiting for quite a while for you to update your blog.
Nothing wrong with post-sucking, hell, it's my main schtick, but you should consider writing a coherent summary of your thoughts.

AWC is unfortunately constrained by wanting to be taken seriously. Diplomacy sometimes requires dancing around unpleasant truths and a certain emotional distance. Holbrooke, Albright the Clintons et. al. were and are failures as humans, but quite effective as cancerous
growths. Tell it, brother!

wadosy

once you start talking about auschwitz revisions, or the lack of graves at treblinka, it gets tricky.

once you start talking about what happens when people have two or three generations of free lunch because they're exempt from criticism, it gets tricky.

once you talk about the way israel has exploited their exemption from criticism, it gets tricky.

wadosy

and there's not a chance in hell that any self-respecting jew will ever admit to the fact that israel's continuing chickenshit behavior is destructive of jewishness.

nope

not when israelis think that israel is the sum of jewishness, and that all jews have got to abandon their morals to defend israel.

wadosy

i'm tired of it

jojo

Something stinks about his DEATH. At 69 and with hardened arteries–and dies in NO time.
I'm guessing–he wanted America to leave Afghastan and the likes of the same killers (JFK,Kelly,Arafat………………….. http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5…
On Hunter S Thompson;

"Paul William Roberts in his Globe and Mail article of Saturday, February 26, 2005 wrote the following:

Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn’t always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He’d been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it:
"They’re gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . .

theothercanada

Billy's wife will not approve this article, she may even ban those serving her from reading.

Phil Giraldi

Good article Kelley. Actually Holbrooke is just a particularly ugly manifestation of the Washington consensus that the US has the moral authority to intervene everywhere in the world at any time and for any reason – or no reason at all. This has brought nothing but grief to countless millions while making the US both less secure and a whole lot poorer. None of this will change until there is a radical rethink of the US role in the world, which I do not see coming unless an economic collapse forces the issue.

wadosy

"…unless an economic collapse forces the issue."

another phil giraldi tapdance.

if you ignore it, it will go away… right, phil?

wadosy

so the antiwar.com mutual admiration society marches off into the sunset, having supposedly accomplished its mission.

bogi666

The fact that Cliton's 1st 2 years in office was an abject failure for the Democrats, evidenced by the Democrats losing their House majority of 40 years should have provided a clue to ObomberBush that following Cliton's strategy may yield the same result, losing Congress to the Repubicans. To ensure a repeat of the Cliton's failed 1st 2 years ObomberBush even brought in the same people, the Clitonista's and shockingly it yielded the same failed result, huge Congressional losses. Just how did ObomberBush think that using the same failed Cliton strategy would result in a different result. He could have studied some Einstein who coined a definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result", failure in ObomberBush's case, even using the same people as well as a bunch of Bush's losers.

wadosy

why dont you tell us why economic collapse is a certainty, why dont you explain how anticipation of economic collapse due to oil shortages is the reason the PNAC/AEI/exxon/9-11 thing happened in the first place?

why dont you explain how a combination of oil shortages, the impending collapse of america, israel's dependence on america for protection, and the near certainty of sea level rise explains israel's desperation?

wadosy

it's the same tired old story, isnt it, phil?

israel has to be secured before its american protector goes tits up from oil shortages.

are you trying to tell us that the CIA and all the gurus in your consulting outfit are unaware of the fact that crude oil production has been flat since 2004, despite horrendous increase in prices and drilling efforts?

Holbrooke's "achievements" in the Balkans are the result of a successful tactic of flattering Milosevic into believing he was an important factor of peace in the Balkans. The only thing I concede the Croat were right in pointing is the similitude between Milosevic's and Mussolini's facial expressions. Though, I do think that Milosevic was a bit more clever. Milosevic so much liked Holbrooke that he welcomed enthusiastically his mediation during the NATO aggression in 1999.

As for Hillary Clinton, her still being in charge of US foreign policy after the disclosure that she ordered stealing credit card numbers, biometric data and DNA from foreign diplomats, as if nothing happened, is revealing of the rot ruling the US.

That Washington's stench doesn't seem to unduly inconvenience Americans is in turn revealing of the state of moral decay of the American society as a whole.